When Episode 22 of Star Trek: Deep Area 9 Season 7 arrives, the sequence is 4 episodes away from closing the figurative e-book on Star Trek‘s most artistically dangerous and exquisitely crafted piece of long-form storytelling thus far. A significant contributor to that success, franchise mainstay Ronald D. Mooreturns his screenwriting pen upon the audacious spin-off two extra instances throughout this house stretch — considered one of them being Episode 22, titled “Tacking into the Wind.”
Unsurprisingly, given Moore’s fame for detailed worldbuilding and subversive emotional rawness, the episode exemplifies Deep Area 9 at its peak: a crackling synergy of riveting sociopolitical weight, elite character progress, and cohesive narrative escalation. And it is a simple-on-the-surface trade from this episode, not one of many dozens of bracing quips or eloquent monologues from earlier entries, that serves as a masterful microcosm of Deep Area 9‘s lasting resonance.
Kira Nerys Challenges Damar Throughout a Pivotal ‘Star Trek: Deep Area 9’ Scene
The Dominion Battle, Deep Area 9‘s crowning arcbins its exceedingly complicated heroes into exceedingly complicated inner conflicts. The endlessly honorable Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) realizes he can settle for tarnishing his soul to defeat a ferocious enemywhereas Bajoran ambassador Kira Nerys (Nana Customer) educates her former oppressors in the identical guerrilla warfare ways she as soon as deployed towards them as a freedom fighter.
Her Cardassian pupils embody Damar (Casey Biggs), a long-time foe turned begrudging ally who not too long ago defected from Cardassia’s alliance with the Dominion. Throughout “Tacking into the Wind,” the Dominion retaliates towards Damar by assassinating his spouse and son. Shocked into grieving stillness, Damar cannot fathom an empire insidious sufficient to wage conflict by thoughtlessly sacrificing “harmless girls and youngsters.” He wonders aloud“What sort of individuals give these orders?” Kira, whereas compassionate about two misplaced lives, quietly responds by slicing him open with a blade of accountability: “Yeah, Damar. What sort of individuals give these orders?”
This second would not carry as a lot profound significance with out Deep Area 9‘s multi-season interconnectivity. By this level, Kira has healed her mosaic of wounds with out relinquishing her rage — nor ought to she give up it. Raised throughout Cardassia’s decades-long occupation of Bajor, she is aware of firsthand the abject cruelty, the labor camps, the mass murders, the “I used to be following orders” rationalizations, and reply in form through an insurgency. With immeasurable generational tragedy all the time buzzing beneath her pores and skinwith a Cardassian navy officer in shut quarters, Kira turns each the irrevocable actuality of conflict and Damar’s culpability again upon him.
‘Star Trek: Deep Area 9’ Strengthens the Franchise’s Optimism by Testing Its Limits
Regardless that the Kira of Season 7 regrets placing a defenseless former enemy, her searing, point-blank knowledge unravels Damar into an ideological disaster. For a lot of people whose proximity to energy retains them insulated from hurt, it does not matter when torment and subjugation befalls a stranger; brutality solely turns into substantive as soon as it arrives at their very own doorstep. Now that Damar’s reeling from an atrocity equivalent to those for which he is culpable — and now that he shares a sliver of the identical ache the Bajorans have skilled numerous instances over — he acknowledges the ineffective horror of all of it.
All Damar can do towards Kira’s phrases is nod in silent, bleak comprehension, then redirect his fury away from her towards the suitable supply. Even a season earlierit might’ve been not possible to think about this self-described loyal patriot reconciling together with his personal sins in addition to these of his self-serving, stagnant, imperialist civilization — not to mention act upon his realization that the toxic outdated methods he as soon as vowed to uphold have to be shattered and remade. If the Cardassians maintain chasing after conquest and glory, they will not survive lengthy sufficient to even try and atone for the bloodshed they’ve aided and abetted.
Deep Area 9 totally realizes the franchise’s potential by increasing Trek’s progressive fundamentals to their breaking level. Like buffing a diamond into shining sharpness, testing the concept of a peaceable future by measuring the price required to realize it strengthens Trek’s optimism right into a hope that is extra bittersweet, fragile, however value cherishing all of the extra. By Deep Area 9‘s closingthe sequence’ surviving characters discover closure as a result of trial-by-fire reassessments like Damar’s have compelled them to desert their preliminary prejudices, oversights, or naivety.
Though it has been a bitter tablet to swallow, their adjusted imaginative and prescient for the longer term does not lack the franchise’s defining idealism; it is stronger and clearer for acknowledging the cycles of violence and their answering inevitability: righteous resistance towards conflict, corruption, and would-be tyrants. Some method of change can all the time occur, nevertheless small — and possibly, simply possibly, the final word change can lastly take maintain: human nature’s finest virtues rising above their worst.